CASE STUDY – MEDIATISED PERFORMANCE IN THE OLYMPIC GAMES OPENING CEREMONY WITH PARTICULAR REFERENCE TO BEIJING AND ATHENS.

CASE STUDY – MEDIATISED PERFORMANCE IN THE OLYMPIC GAMES OPENING CEREMONY WITH PARTICULAR REFERENCE TO BEIJING AND ATHENS.

Anthony Kalergis, Maika Nguyen, Jessica Lawrence and Talin Agon.

The Olympic Games are a celebration of humanity through physical excellence in sport and the arts. The Opening Ceremony of both the recent Beijing 2008 Olympics and its previous in Athens 2004 extended the concept of mediatised performance to drastic levels never thought possible.
The issue of liveness, interaction, intimacy and audience experience is prevalent when analysing a live performance in a mediatised culture. Auslander’s Live Performance In A Mediatised Culture outlines the notion that that the ‘liveness’ of performance and mediatised culture is a fusion of a digital environment that incorporates the live elements as part of its raw material.
The Olympic Opening Ceremonies present mediatised performance in such a way. The presentation will be broken up into four distinct categories of how mediatised performance is used:
• Liveness
• Surveillance
• Embeddedness and Culture
• Technology
Each area will be addressed to the audience with a focus on how such areas are evident within the theatrical and mediatised performance of the Olympic Games Opening Ceremony.
The Olympic Ceremonies highlight the contemporary themes of technology becoming the forefront of society, culture, media & performance. In light of such ideas, the relationship between the body and technology is also intensified. This can be seen in the example of the Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremony in which hundreds of people wore lit-up body suits in which the technology was incorporated into their clothing, which in essence looked as though it was incorporated into the performers' being or selves. The physical participation of the audience within the Opening Ceremony, such as carrying flags or waving torches to create a light effect also incorporates technology as an extension of the individual. The relationship between technology and the body within the performance displays the embeddedness of technology within culture.
The concern for the fusion of technology and culture can be found in the Beijing Olympic Ceremony's theme of 'Civilization & Harmony'. The presentation of the Games relied heavily on the fact that the entire event was mediatised as a ‘live’ performance throughout the world at the exact same time through television broadcast, radio and Internet documentation. Thus in technology being so prevalent within the ceremony it must be asked how this comments on the contemporary notion of civilization and what we, the audience, consider to be reflective of modern day culture.
A live performance must appeal to every sense and emotion possible. A live performance, regardless of its presentation, must contain an intimate relationship and understanding with the audience of the present. The live is the current cultural experience of the audience, whether it is the experience of an original presentation or the reproduction of the original. This is dependent on the level of interaction between the performance and the audience, and arguably (according to Auslander) the level of realism of what is being experienced by the initial audience, irrespective of the time and space.
In this case the group will present a series of YouTube videos, images and minor case studies illustrating various media performances of the Olympics. These include the lighting of the Olympic flame in Beijing (an athlete hoisted into the air, running across the rim of the stadium, which is illuminated with visuals of China’s history and people), the ‘parade of history’ in the Athens 2004 Games illustrating over two-thousand years of history for the Greeks, the countdown to the start of the Opening Ceremony with thousands of Chinese illuminated drums and participants, and the Greek depiction of the development of the arts, sculpture and humanity in its elevation of a series of props and representations to the centre of the stadium.
The embeddedness of technology in culture and the human condition is reflected in performance artists' work such as Stelarc, who explores the symbiotic relationship between technology and the body. Such theories and concepts will be related to the Olympic ceremonies in order to draw conclusions about the relationship between the body and technology as well as embeddedness.
Auslander explains how the notion of liveness has shifted with the development of technology. Not realising that we all consume performance in a mediatised form, such liveness is simply distorted through sound amplification (microphones) to cinematic technique. We often don’t question the nature of liveness when we consume, especially if the consumption offers a particularly good perspective of a performance that we most likely couldn’t reach ourselves. Initially we are accepting. The Beijing Opening Ceremony depicts the traditional past in transition with the technological present. China’s seek for perfection has brought up two startling truths, that is, the digitally produced footprint fireworks and the singing girl who mimics another voice (both of which will be discussed in detail throughout the presentation). Living in such a mediatised world we are able to manipulate such things to a point of contemporary illusion; a new type of liveness.
In connection to this we have the concept of surveillance that we refer to not just literally but cinematically. We found that the Beijing government faced serious controversy with issues of censorship and the Games. Censorship is a form of control that directly correlates to ‘perspective’; the perspective of the performance we are offered, especially in relation to the Olympic Games as it was a largely mediatised and broadcast international event. Much like the ‘Big Brother’ effect, surveillance is kept to control a crowd but also control our experience. The unbelievable footage ties into the whole feeling of power in surveillance. Again we can reflect to the digitally produced footprint fireworks to completely comprehend the true nature of what is ‘unbelievable’.
Such theories will be presented to the class with paper handouts, visual YouTube and image presentation and class discussion. The Olympic Games definitely displays a creative blend of technology, surveillance and culture to create a broad physical and visual experience for the participating audience.

Auslander, Phillip ‘Introduction’ [excerpt] Liveness: Performance in a Mediatised Culture (Routledge, London and New York, 1999), pp10-39.